Location & IOM Honors

In October, Catherine McLaughlin and Mike Boehnke were elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a
prestigious honor for researchers in medical science, health care, and public health.
McLaughlin, a professor of health management and policy and director of the University
of Michigan Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, said she owes the honor in part to her third-floor School of Public Health office,
whose two previous occupants, current SPH Dean Ken Warner and the late Professor Emeritus
Avedis Donabedian, were both elected to the IOM. “So it’s the lucky office,” McLaughlin
laughs.

What’s more, the office overlooks Ann Arbor’s Forest Hills Cemetery, where Donabedian,
who was a friend and mentor to McLaughlin, is buried. “He told us he got a plot so
that we could sit there on days we were struggling and get inspiration,” McLaughlin
remembers. “He said, ‘So you can just look to me, or even come out on a nice day and
take a walk and ask, Avedis, what in the world should I do?’”

Boehnke, the Richard G. Cornell Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics, says he was
“thrilled and humbled” to learn of his election to the IOM, and “very honored that
colleagues at the university wanted to put me up.” Since his office sits directly
above McLaughlin’s, he agrees with her that “this clearly is a good corner.”

Photo by Peter Smith.

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